Week 13: November 27 – December 1, 2017

For this week's blog, all of the captions and explanations are written by our Grade 1-2 students. Once a month, the students are the bloggers and have the opportunity to explain their learning to readers.

This week, students continued working on measurement skills in math class. The practiced selecting units, locating the zero, and then lining the zero up with an edge of the object to measure length or width. Students enjoyed finding challenging objects to measure in the classroom and practiced recording their results. Through the use of our math calendar, all students are practicing counting by 5s, 2s, and 10s while one student is even working on addition with regrouping! In CERES class, they worked with transparent and opaque materials to create different designs. Students also spent time in science class brainstorming topics for their upcoming Linden Science & Technology Fair topics while talking about how to design experiments. This week, students in Grade 1-2 and the Early Learning class brought incredible spirit and encouragement to a staff vs. students basketball game with handmade pompoms and we even had a special visit from a young friend. On Friday, we crafted a holiday countdown calendar with acts of kindness behind each door that students can try to enact each day leading up to the winter break. We are looking forward to opening more days next week!

G: "I was reading non-fiction books which I LOVE! I love them because when you read them, in the past they are real. Non-fiction books are not a made-up story, they’re a real story about the past. This book is about Saskatchewan. We have 13 of them in our class."

S: "We were writing ideas for Science Fair about what we could have experiments about. My favourite idea so far is making rock candy and testing what type of liquid is best for it."

Z: "I was measuring M’s foot and she was doing her writing for somebody’s else’s measurement. Her foot size was 7 inches."

M: "In math class, I was measuring the door beside Savannah’s room and our room. It was hard to measure this door because it was very very tall so I had to get a chair. Soteira helped me add the numbers together because it was more than 100 cm. It was 211 cm."

K: "I was measuring the honey jar this week. First I had to find the zero at the beginning of the numbers and then I had to put it at the top of the jar."

G: "I was trying to measure the sign but it was too big. I decided to do a different one because this one was too hard. I like the green measuring tape because you can pull it up and then when you pull it too high, you use the button and when you press it, it comes back to you. So you have to fish it out and then swirl it in."

K: "I am doing measuring using a measuring tape because I measured Soteira’s foot. After I measured it, I wrote it down and then remembered to put the units. We are learning about inches and centimetres."

M: "In CERES, we were looking at a bubble when Beth blows it through the straw. She put the bubble on top of the projector. I noticed that it looks like a bee hive because it sticks together and kind of makes a hexagon."

K: "When my class was in the CERES lab, there was bubbles in the bowl when Beth put the straw in to make something like a bird’s nest."

Z: "At CERES, we were doing shapes and we were drawing on wax paper so we can make designs. We were learning if something is see-through or not see-through. The wax paper was see-through and we put it on the projector and it was a design."

G: "Me and M were doing the hard thing of the game. The game is first ant gets home. You had to roll the dice and then use your ruler to measure that many centimetres. M won the game."

S: "This is me and K playing the ant game. The first time K won and the second time I won the game. It was hard getting to the ant hill because sometimes I would just roll a 1 and then I would only get to go a tiny bit far."

G: "At CERES, me and my friends were on computers and we were having fun. We were doing lots and lots of writing and drawing. When I was writing P-O-P-P-Y, the Y was on the other side which was weird. We were practicing how to type."

M: "This is my unicorn and it’s made from the scraps of the paper that I made cards from. It looked like a horse so I made it as a unicorn and then I coloured it different colours to make it pretty. I did not throw it in the recycling because I wanted to reuse it so I decorated it like a unicorn instead."

G: "In social studies, we were learning about community. I wrote about my neighbours and my family. My most favourite family is H and J. I am their cousin. They have one big brother, one little brother and we have one big sister, one little sister."

M: "I was doing my community paper and it was my good copy. I wrote about all my friends, family, and health people. I love them because they do so much good things for me and that’s why I put them on the paper even though I have too many to fit."

K: "I was reading a book to Soteira. I read the whole book until I read another book. The funny part of this book is that when there was an exclamation mark, I said that word very loudly like 'LOOK!'"

M: "We were taking a picture in phys ed class and we were at the park with the grade 7s. We were in the park and we might be covered in wood chips because we found a big mountain of wood chips. We took a picture because then we would remember this day and we could look at it in the blog."

Z: "Yesterday in math class, we were counting by 5s. You could just get 5 and then count 5 more on your fingers. They all end in 5 or 0."

M: "In math class, I was doing carrying and adding. It wasn’t going sideways, it was going up and down. I am proud of this because I got all of them right except two questions. I never got just two mistakes so I was very happy of what I did."

G: "I was counting backwards from 100 and I was counting by 5s. It was tricky because it is so hard to not get mixed up."

M: "I was reading to G Please Mr. Panda and she tried to read along with me too. I really likes that because she was learning to read and I really like teaching people how to do stuff. I really enjoyed reading to Grace and it was easy because it was a picture book that I could read."

M: "The teachers and the older students were having a basketball game and everybody won one round. Our job was cheering and me and my friends cheered with our pompoms and said 'Go teachers! Go students! Go teachers! Go students!'"

G: "Me and Grace were in Chess Club. Nasrin came because she is one of my favourite teachers in the school. She is nice and she is very very funny. When she is funny, we laugh with her. In Chess Club, we learned how to play fair and how they fight the teams because they don’t like each other."

G: "Baby N is walking with her mom. She is so tiny because she is a baby. I was pointing to her mamma so she could know where to walk to."

Z: "Yesterday, at the end of art, we saw Baby N and then we saw Elizabeth. She was our music/French teacher last year. We were showing Baby N what we were learning in Writer’s Workshop and N was practicing walking with her mom."

M: "At the end of the day, me and my brother and Z took a picture. My brother had Snoopy in his backpack because it was pyjama day at his school. It was fun because we took a picture with three of us."

S: "This morning, we were doing our word sorts and I was gluing my words on the paper. I think next week I’ll get new words. My words this week were all about short vowels."

S: "This is like feet I made with the connectors. I made them because I was thinking about movies where there are big animals so I made feet where I could hold."

M: "In gym class, we were doing phys ed centres and me and Z were making a path to dribble with the pollyspots and we dribbled all the way to the mat. We put the balls in through the hula hoops and then we went over and over again. I was practicing how to do basketball when I’m doing the real thing."

S: "I was decorating our holiday countdown calendar. Inside the doors, there are acts of kindness that we came up with. We were decorating the snowflake so we can put it on our classroom door."

M: "After we decorated our snowflake, we took a picture together with the Early Learners and we held the papers up. The snowflake was really pretty. I am excited about the countdown calendar when we start it."

Z: “The honey was $10 and a lot of people bought the honey. The money is for next year because this year it was free and the bees on our roof were giving us honey to eat. We wrote cards and painted them and Soteira photocopied them. This is all my friends taking a picture with all the honey. It was fun learning about all the bees.”